A year-long exploratory project examined how well students could effectively respond to a piece of first-year writing using an articulated framework--Assignment, Focus, Organization, Support, and Proofreading (AFOSP). The students in these small-group writing tutorials received peer-facilitated support while they were enrolled in first-year…

Every year approximately 1,300 first-year students at the Rochester Institute of Technology complete a 50-minute placement essay during summer and fall orientations. The essays are scored holistically, and the students are placed into one of three levels of an English composition course. At the end of the 10-week quarter of instruction, students…

Discusses principles about writing instruction that emerged from mainstreaming basic writers in first-year composition at California State University, Chico: (1) students learn college writing by being in the context of college writing, not some other context; and (2) literacy learning does not come in discreet levels. Describes how writers in…

Describes how three faculty members created a learning community at a nonresidential campus by creating and teaching a linked block of three core-curriculum courses (Composition 1, Speech Communication, and Cultural Anthropology) for incoming freshman students. Relates first-day class activities, describes the linking of assignments and communal…

A multimedia pilot program at Laramie County Community College, Wyoming, used a series of instructional modules with testing units to allow freshman composition students to review their own particular areas of weakness, to test themselves, and to move on at their own pace. The program used the technologies available in the school's…

The University of South Alabama addressed a rapid increase in the population of limited-English-proficient (LEP) students in its freshman composition classes by developing classes in writing in English as a Second Language (ESL). These students were having difficulty in mainstream freshman composition classes, both with the proficiency level…